The IPKat

Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech, privacy and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. Read, post comments and participate!

Friday fantasies

Forthcoming events. Please remember to check out the IPKat's Forthcoming Events page! There's always something going on there, and you might even find a pleasant way to pass the time of day with like-minded IP experts and/or enthusiasts. Here's a reminder that the annual IP Publishers and Editors Lunch on 25 November [see the top of the IPKat's home page sidebar for details] now has nearly 60 registrants -- and there's still room for more. If you are involved in the traditional or online dissemination of IP-related information, or if you edit it or compose it for media release, do join us for what is always a lovely occasion.

Nadeem from Nimblebot[now that's a curious business name, thinks Merpel]has written to tell the Kats that he and his colleagues have been working on patent litigation and patent troll issues for a while and that they are helping the CEA [this could be one of any number of organisations that share this acronym: Cinema Exhibitors' Association? Construction Equipment Association? Centre for Effective Altruism? Do tell!] and a coalition of other companies and legislators in the US with a project to raise awareness—and to petition the senate for Patent Legislation Reform. Readers can check out Nimblebot's video and petition here and follow us on twitter @PatentFix. Judging by the fact that @PatentFix had just 16 followers when the IPKat checked it out this morning, one might imaging that this campaign has yet to take off

Strategy, Kategy! This Kat received an email earlier this week to the effect that he has been nominated for inclusion in the 2015 edition of the IAM Strategy 300, the Intellectual Asset Management (IAM) publication that lists the world’s leading IP strategists. According to the rubric,

"The nomination process is ongoing and only those IP strategists who receive three separate nominations from outside of their own organisation will progress to the next stage of the research process. The nominations period closes ... on Monday November 3 2014.
We are sending you this email to see whether you would like to enter your own nominations for the 2015 edition – we have opened up our eligibility guidelines this year to include anyone involved in IP strategy across the globe, including for the first time individuals working in operating companies, universities or research organisations".

He feels greatly honoured that someone should have taken the trouble to nominate him but suspects that, if he is worth nominating, a large proportion of his friends, colleagues and readers are equally worthy. His main strategy, whether in IP or outside it, has been to get other people to help him with whatever he is doing or, better still, to do it for him. This strategy is flawless, except at the point when one comes to implement it ...

Hmm. Doesn't look veryinvisible to this Kat ...

Around the weblogs. On SOLO IP, Michael Factor muses on whether it's better to spend any financial surplus over one's hard-earned outgoings on spurious awards or on a family holiday. The 1709 Blog features a call for help from an obviously intelligent but perplexed reader who is struggling to understand the import of the recent UK amendments that extend copyright protection to certain design documents following the repeal of section 52 of the world's longest and most non-navigable piece of copyright legislation. On Afro-IP, Darren Olivier writes up ClearVu, the first South African ruling on passing off and keyword advertising (Darren's note is here; you can access the judgment here). Finally, the MARQUES Class 46 weblog carries notes on the Bulgarian Supreme Court ruling in VASILKA (occasional jobs taken on by employee do not constitute genuine use of a registered trade mark by an employer) and an unusual German ruling in which two distantly similar marks containing the word "fox" were not found to be confusingly similar [incidentally, MARQUES's Facebook page carries plenty of interesting trade mark-related material: you can find it here].

Nice job if you can get it. The UK Intellectual Property Office is advertising for a new Chief Economist [details are available here] to succeed the incumbent, Tony Clayton. Congenial Katfriend Tony has led the Economics, Research and Evidence team since 2010, following stints as Director of Economic Analysis (Office for National Statistics) and as a Director of strategy consultancy PIMS Associates. The Kats wish him well in whatever he does next with his time and hopes that whoever follows him will be as cheerful.